On This Page

Brightcove Player Sample: Dynamically Change Source Videos

Product(s)

Video Cloud

Brightcove Player

Role(s)

Player Developer

Task(s)

Publish Videos

Topic(s)

Advanced HTML/CSS

Code Samples

Playback

In this topic, you will learn how to address the common use-case of dynamically changing the video loaded in the player. This topic shows you how to do this using both the In-Page embed and the iframe implementations.

Player example

Click the button below the player to dynamically change the source video.

iframe or In-Page embed

When developing enhancements for the Brightcove player you will need to decide if the code is a best fit for the iframe or In-Page embed implementation. The best practice recommendation is to build a plugin for use with an iframe implementation. The advantages of using the iframe player are:

No collisions with existing JavaScript and/or CSS

Automatically responsive

The iframe eases use in social media apps (or whenever the video will need to "travel" into other apps)

Although integrating the In-Page embed player can be more complex, there are times when you will plan your code around that implementation. To generalize, this approach is best when the containing page needs to communicate to the player. Specifically, here are some examples:

Code in the containing page needs to listen for and act on player events

The player uses styles from the containing page

The iframe will cause app logic to fail, like a redirect from the containing page

Even if your final implementation does not use the iframe code, you can still use the In-Page embed code with a plugin for your JavaScript and a separate file for your CSS. This encapsulates your logic so that you can easily use it in multiple players.

API/Plugin resources used

Player/HTML configuration

This section details any special configuration needed during player creation. In addition, other HTML elements that must be added to the page, beyond the in-page embed player implementation code, are described.

Player configuration

No special configuration is required for the Brightcove Player you create for this sample.

Other HTML

A button is added that calls a custom changeVideo() method.

Application flow

The basic logic behind this application is:

The user clicks a button to change the video currently playing in the player.

A video object is retrieved.

The video object is loaded into the player.

Video playback is started.

Get, load and play the video

Find the code which is labeled:

// ### Get, load and play video ###

The function first retrieves a video object using the catalog.getVideo() method. The video object is then loaded into the player using the catalog.load() method. Finally, the play() method is used to initiate playback.

Application styling

The only CSS used sizes the player.

Plugin code

The code in this sample does not make sense used in a plugin.

iframe implementation

The iframe implementation can be used in a very similar way as shown above. Sample code is available. Most of the code in this implementation is a JavaScript exercise. The one point that may not be clear is that when you load a new source into the iframe, HTML will automatically reload the iframe.